Semi-Informed Newbie Requires First CarPC Suggestions

Hey Guys,

I just purchased a 2014 Ram 2500 a few weeks ago (a silly decision but hey, we can all be stupid once in a while) and I have been looking more into CarPC's as a form of rear seat entertainment. For some reason, this model year, Chrysler has stopped offering the rear entertainment system in the Ram lineup. It's available for the Caravan, Jeep and a few others but not my truck.

The ideal setup I have in my head is to have a small 7" touch screen somewhere in the front (either on the dash, windshield or hidden in the console) that will control the CarPC and have a roof mounted 10 - 15" flip down video monitor for the backseat passengers. In my truck, I have an aux in 3.5mm jack and will just run the PC audio from the 3.5mm out on the motherboard.

I've been staring at forums and DIY sites and that for a few weeks now and just had a few questions I was going to run by everyone and see what you all thought.

For starters, I am either going to purchase a prebuilt VoomPC-2 from Mini-Box (along with the PSU it requires), buy the barebones case and build my own mITX pc or grab one of the smaller m350 Jetway or Zotac boxes they offer.

From there I was thinking of either a Mimo Touch 2 or 720F, Lilliput 669GL-70NP/C/T-5HB or an Elo 0700L as the touchscreen controller in the front. I read a few bad things about the Mimo's, but noticed those were from the 1st generation of 720F models I think. I haven't been able to find much on the Elo screens and it seems like everyone around here is pretty fond of the Lilliputs.

For the rear I was thinking of the Xenarc 1530YR or the Concept CFD-135. Connections to be determined, I don't really know whether D-Sub or HDMI or DVI is better than one another in this type of application. Are there any usb video input capable screens, or would I want to use one input over the other?

So, to go from here, I was wondering what everyones opinions on the latest builds of the Mimo screens are, or if anyone has any better suggestions for a roof mount screen or pc chassis.

I'm fairly certain this is a post that shows up in here quite often but rather than read suggestions for another newbies setup, I figured I'd submit my own.

I like HDMI for monitors because of ease of wiring and ease of configuration, but you usually only find one HDMI port. Get as bright a monitor as you can find. I really like ELO touchscreens, having been using them daily at work for many years. They are expensive though and not really any brighter than any other monitors. You need brightness in a car because sunlight washes out the screen easily. I just have a Chinatobby 8" HDMI screen for now, and it's not very bright, but is acceptable. It's not capacitive, but the single point touch works fine.

I built a Voom2 housed I7 Mobile based unit, and it seems to work great even though it is running at 2.1GHz. It turbo's at 3.1GHz when needed, but only uses 35 watts.